WIMPs are theorized particles considered to be leading candidates for dark matter, invisible material believed to make up more than 80 percent of the matter in the universe. In the Minnesota experiment, called COGENT, a hockey puck–sized chunk of germanium deep in a former iron mine attempts to record rare collisions with WIMPS.

In 15 months’ worth of data, COGENT researchers detected a seasonal variation in the collision rate — higher in summer and lower in winter — similar to that seen for 13 years by a larger experiment, using different detectors, in Italy. Researchers with that experiment, DAMA/LIBRA, have attributed the results to the Earth’s motion through a cloud of WIMPs (for weakly interacting massive particles) But many physicists have doubted that interpretation because, until now, no other experiment had found similar results.

The importance of the seasonal deviation is that it points to another theory of dark matter that it clusters closest to centers of gravity. i.e; the Sun, but more importantly the center of our galaxy - Sagittarius. So, as the Earth orbits the Sun and the solar system orbits the center of the galaxy, there are points when the Earth is heading, relatively towards the center of the galaxy. At this point, sharp spikes in dark matter should be picked up.